When the country became disturbed, and nightly meetings of the peasantry were constantly held, followed by outrages against life and property to the most frightful extent, the usual resources of the law were employed unavailingly.  It was in vain to offer high rewards.  Approvers could not be found; and so perfectly organized were the secret associations, that few beyond the very ringleaders knew any thing of consequence to communicate.  Special commissions were sent down from Dublin; additional police force, detachments of military; long correspondences took place between the magistracy and the government—­but all in vain.  The disturbances continued; and at last to such a height had they risen, that the country was put under martial law; and even this was ultimately found perfectly insufficient to repel what now daily threatened to become an open rebellion rather than mere agrarian disturbance.  It was at this precise moment, when all resources seemed to be fast exhausting themselves, that certain information reached the Castle, of the most important nature.  The individual who obtained and transmitted it, had perilled his life in so doing—­but the result was a great one—­no less than the capital conviction and execution of seven of the most influential amongst the disaffected peasantry.  Confidence was at once shaken in the secrecy of their associates; distrust and suspicion followed.  Many of the boldest sunk beneath the fear of betrayal, and themselves, became evidence for the crown; and in five months, a county shaken with midnight meetings, and blazing with insurrectionary fires, became almost the most tranquil in its province.  It may well be believed, that he who rendered this important service on this trying emergency, could not be passed over, and the name of J. Larkins soon after appeared in the Gazette as one of his Majesty’s justices of the peace for the county; pretty much in the same spirit in which a country gentleman converts the greatest poacher in his neighbourhood by making him, his gamekeeper.

In person he was a large and powerfully built man, considerably above six feet in height, and possessing great activity, combined with powers of enduring fatigue almost incredible.  With an eye like a hawk, and a heart that never knew fear, he was the person, of all others, calculated to strike terror into the minds of the country people.  The reckless daring with which he threw himself into danger—­the almost impetuous quickness with which he followed up a scent, whenever information reached him of an important character—­had their full effect upon a people who, long accustomed to the slowness and the uncertainty of the law were almost paralyzed at beholding detection and punishment follow on crime, as certainly as the thunder-crash follows the lightning.